The All Aloha Plumbing success story isn’t about serendipity, where good things drop into your lap. Owner Deven Tells so rarely sits he may not even have a lap. No, the company’s growth is a product of risk-taking, perseverance and the good feeling that permeates its work.

One might guess that All Aloha is a Hawaiian company, “aloha” being a signature declaration of the Pacific Ocean islands-state, and that the company story reads like a paradisial tale set to ukulele music and swaying dancers.

Think again. Tells and his rapidly-growing company got to where they are today through personal integrity, hard work and an abiding interest in making life a little better for everyone.

Finding the right path

It all began when Tells’ great-grandfather emigrated to Hawaii from Portugal in the 19th century. Tells himself came along in the late 20th century, born on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It turned out not to be an idyllic setting for the young man, who was raised by his grandparents and “bounced around” a lot in his youth.

His Hawaii-born grandfather was a firefighter and, ultimately, manager of an American Fence Company office. He earned his grandson’s respect early on by patiently guiding him onto paths of responsibility. Tells looks back with gratitude for his grandfather’s guidance.

“He never gave up trying to start me down the right path. I wanted to make him proud,” Tells says.

Plumbing was the way to do it, he determined. He was living on the Big Island — Hawaii — with his grandparents when he visited a close friend by the name of Calvin Gulia, who was a plumber. While he was there for the weekend, Gulia invited Tells to accompany him on his service calls. Something clicked.

“Since then, I have never stopped plumbing,” says Tells.

As a novice plumber, he moved to another island in the Hawaiian chain, Maui, for a very good reason: The young woman he was dating said she would marry him only if he moved. She kept her word and the couple now has two daughters.

The move to Maui was unfortunate timing, however, occurring in 2009 when recession spawned by a housing industry collapse spread clear across the country to Hawaii. One year later, Tells still was plumbing for a minimum wage. While eating at a Taco Bell, he bumped into Steve Huffman, a budding plumbing company owner who persuaded Tells to hire on as his first employee. 

It was a fortuitous meeting but did not turn out to be a lasting relationship. Tells worked at the company for seven years, reaching the position of vice president, but began to realize the job was not going to afford him the additional opportunity he was seeking. 

“Steve taught me a lot about how to run a plumbing company,” Tells says.

When assurances about advancement proved hollow, Tells was deeply disappointed and decided to leave before he became embittered and lost his aloha spirit. “I chose a different route. I always had an entrepreneurial mindset and wanted to start a company.”

Before he started All Aloha Plumbing in 2017, however, he returned a favor to his friend Calvin Gulia. Tells proposed that he work for Gulia for a few months and invigorate the company by introducing some of the best practices he had learned.

Gulia agreed and Tells moved to Honolulu for the task. He introduced a CRM system for managing business systems, analyzed the company’s customer base, subbed flat-rate pricing for hourly pricing, and otherwise restructured his friend’s company. Set on a surer foundation, the company — Emergency Plumbing, which was relocated to Oahu — has blossomed into one of the bigger plumbing houses on the island.

A debt of friendship repaid, Tells returned to Maui and opened the doors to his company in 2017.

Dreaming bigger

All Aloha Plumbing is a Hawaiian story, yes, but not all Hawaiian. In the years since launching the company, Tells has dramatically expanded it, first in the islands and then across the ocean to the mainland United States.

He operated on Maui for two and a half years before opening an All Aloha location in Oahu in 2020. A couple years ago, a company store was opened in Tempe, Arizona, followed last summer by the launch of a location in San Diego. Tells says the 2,500-mile jump to the mainland wasn’t because business was faltering in Hawaii.

“We are still growing in our Hawaii locations by 20-25% a year,” he says.

Yet the itch to open the other two offices couldn’t be ignored. “I don’t see our growth in Hawaii slowing down any time soon, so if I can get four snowballs rolling at once, all the better.” 

The 38-year-old company owner trusts his managers’ ability to make a success of it.

“A lot of entrepreneurs hold their companies back because they don’t trust their management,” he says. “I truly believe we have great managers and leaders and a lot of good systems and processes in place. I let the managers run with decisions, unless they are insane. I try to let them do what they want to try to do.”

They are local managers, too, he notes. Tells is a fan of coffee company Starbucks, which he says learned in its expansion into China that hiring local people was a key to introducing a company to a new area. “That resonated with me, so I tried to hire locally.”

So far, the expansion across the ocean to California and Arizona has been a positive for the company owner, with the exception of Arizona weather. “I thought I could handle heat, but, boy, was I wrong. You have to be built better than I am.” 

Heat aside, the Phoenix business experience has been good. In its first year in operation, the Arizona company store generated more than a million dollars in revenue. That didn’t come easy, though, and some of the profit is offset by the expense of an ambitious branding effort. 

“It has been a challenge because it is a very competitive market,” Tells says.

He launched a branding effort to raise the company’s profile. “It is a heavy, heavy branding of the company to introduce us to the community. Radio, billboards, Facebook, TV, direct mailing. We’re starting now to see the fruit of it.”

Working hard

All Aloha Plumbing is principally a plumbing company, but at all locations, it also offers other services such as drain cleaning, jetting, gas line repair and pipe lining. Still, the biggest revenue producer is residential plumbing work. 

Bradford White water heaters and either Rinnai or Noritz tankless water heaters are the brands of choice. Moen fixtures are another company staple. Tells is also a Milwaukee Tool guy, though he credits Milwaukee marketing for that. “Tools are pretty much all the same, but I love Milwaukee because I think the company did such a good job promoting it as the choice of professionals. It’s in your head.”

The company has 22 vans spread among its four locations, all of them Ford Transit units brightly painted and carefully stocked. Both characteristics are important to Tells. “I really believe we have some of the most beautiful vans in the industry. But we also have a parts inventory so that the vans go out carrying just about anything a technician will need for a job. We want to be efficient and to maximize each house call.”

Most calls — about 90% — are to homes rather than to commercial properties. That’s by design, according to Tells. Commercial property managers tend to cut corners, which sometimes leaves plumbing houses liable for subsequent water system failures. Homeowners don’t do that. “We like to deal with people who own their homes because they want to do what’s best for their properties. We try to do what’s best for them.”

Finding and attracting tradespeople to work for the company is not a problem, Tells says, so much as it’s a process. He acknowledges the industry’s struggle to get another generation of workers, but he blames management for some of the dilemma. 

“I am going to be honest. I hear it’s so hard to find people to work, but if you don’t put any effort into it, what do you expect?” he says. “A lot of owners spend one or two hours a week looking for people. My managers know that it is part of their job to spend three or four hours a week on recruiting, consistently recruiting. If you put energy into it, you get results.” Tells says All Aloha has an abundance of apprentices riding to calls in its Ford Transit vans.

Jet-setter

Success hasn’t come easily to All Aloha Plumbing and its continued growth won’t come from being on autopilot. Pilot is the operative word: Tells is constantly flying from one location to another managing his businesses. “Typically, I’ll spend a few days on Maui,” he explains, “then a week in Oahu, a week in Phoenix, maybe a couple of weeks in San Diego — and then I’ll see my wife and kids in Oregon.”

Oregon? Tells explains that his wife Ashley is very close to her extended family, a characteristic of Hawaiian people. When many of her family members moved to Oregon, she and the children found the absence of siblings and cousins difficult. The couple talked about it and Tells moved them to the Pacific Northwest.

His far-flung company keeps him away from home anyway, so the move made some sense. “We talked about it and I am fine with that. Family is everything to her,” Tells says. So, a week or so out of each month, Tells flies into Oregon to spend downtime with Ashley and their two daughters.

He says he recently had a conversation with one of his employees, who told the boss, “‘Man, you seem spread really thin.’ I told him I couldn’t be any thicker. I have great people in place who make my life easy. The only thing that makes it hard is being away so much from my wife and kids. My wife said to me once, ‘When is enough enough?’ I told her, I ain’t stopping. I know how hard life is.”

The constant travel isn’t a permanent gig, but it is a necessary one right now, the owner says. “The company is in a good place. People who worked hard are all being taken care of. We’ll see the result of the hard work when we’re done. When I’m taking my last breath, I’ll look at my daughters and know I was able to provide a good life for them.”